Together
by eagles1254
Summary: Post I Will Follow You Into the Dark. Meredith sticks with Derek even though he tells her to leave. Healing fic for Derek. Progress fic for Meredith


This is just an exploration of the healed Meredith Grey that is committed to Derek Shepherd and plans to stick with him through thick and thin. Please review.

**Disclaimer: I don't own Grey's Anatomy.**

After he bats your almost-engagement ring into the woods like means it nothing more than a piece of aluminum foil would and violently demands that you leave, you watch him retreat into his tin can, shoulders drawn forward and down, hulking. You don't have to think for even a moment before you remind him (the attempt is futile, you suspect) that you and him are in it together this time. Then you stuff your cold hands in the pockets of your coat to traverse the short distance to your beat up blue jeep.

You clamber in behind the steering wheel and take a moment to decide your course of action before you twist the key in the ignition and turn the car around to drive away from Derek's land. You dig your cell phone from your purse and dial Izzie's number. Derek would kill you for talking on your cell phone and driving, but you really need advice. Izzie doesn't pick up, but Cristina does when you select her number from your contacts next. Her voice is terse and clipped, but not in the usual Cristina way. You don't have time to ask her what's wrong.

"Cris, Derek's completely gone."

"Like up and left, gone?"

You curse yourself for your insensitive wording. "No like figuratively, metaphorically, whatever."

"So he's drunk?"

"No, well yes, but that's not what I meant."

"What did you mean, Mer?" You can hear impatience seeping into her tone.

You roll your eyes, thankful that she can't see you. "I mean, I don't know what happened to McDreamy. I don't know this Derek Shepherd."

"Are you driving?" Cristina accused.

"Yes." You're defensive. "I needed advice."

"You called me for relationship advice?" Cristina's impatience has morphed into incredulity.

"Well, I tried Izzie first."

"Oh," Cristina paused. "Well, I haven't seen Izzie."

You frown. It isn't like Cristina to voluntarily offer more information than is necessary. But you aren't going to let yourself be diverted from your mission. You have to get back to Derek's land before he realizes you're gone and thinks you're ditching when it gets hard once again.

"Alright, I have to go, Cris."

With a half-hearted, half sarcastic, "hope you find McDreamy," she disconnects the call, and you are left again with your thoughts. You turn on the radio, and when nothing is on, you dig in your purse for your iPod. You curse under your breath when you can't find it and realize that you left pretty much everything in your locker in your rush to find Derek after your shift had ended that day. Wondering idly if there is anything in the CD player, you push the play button and strains of The Clash fill your jeep. You hate The Clash, but they remind you of the Derek you can't seem to find, so you let it play, filling your head with thoughts of the man you fell in love with.

Five minutes later, you reach your destination. When you walk inside, cheesecake offerings are spread before you in a sea of flavors, colors, sizes and textures. You realize then that you don't know his favorite flavor of cheesecake, but knowing him, he probably won't even eat it, so does the flavor of your symbol of love, devotion and commitment really matter?  
You think that choosing his favorite flavor will significantly help the cause, so you carefully peruse each plate, ranging from the original flavor to the most exotic. You quickly notice that there are at least fifty slices of cake on display and maybe choosing The Cheesecake Factory was not a good decision on your part, but you couldn't think of anywhere else that you knew would find really good cheesecake. After lingering for a longer amount of time than you would have liked over enticing options like raspberry swirl and blueberry twist, you settle on a slice of the original.

Next you go to the grocery store and buy his favorite brand of imported coffee ice cream. The hard liquor is in the aisle next to the ice cream, and you slow down as you walk past, your eyes immediately going to the shelf where you know they keep his favorite scotch, but when the image of him smashing beer can after beer can into the woods plays through your head, you speed back up toward the cash registers.

You are reaching the beginning of the line when it occurs to you that Derek will need and want aspirin. The alcoholic content of his beer was not as high as that of the tequila he had downed in copious amounts a few days previously, but he had definitely consumed more beer on less food today.

By the time you get the aspirin and check out of the grocery store, you have taken much more time than you had planned. You're sure Derek has noticed your departure by now, and you'll have to explain to him that you weren't running, but rather planning your reconciliation with him. You hope he's sobered enough to see reason; you can't imagine that there was any more beer in the trailer. He had been living at your house for months now, and the trailer is your haunt. You kept only tequila, and you and Cristina finished that off weeks ago.

When you reach his land, you hold your bags in one hand and skirt around to the back of the car. You sigh in relief when you open the hatch and find the two items you were praying Izzie hadn't removed in her cleaning binge the previous week. For the first time since she had moved into your house, her cleaning had ventured far beyond the kitchen. She had scrubbed every inch of the every shared room before cleaning out every car in the driveway.

Thankfully, the heavy wool blanket Derek insisted you keep for emergencies and the medical journal with the publication of the success of the clinical trial still sit in back of your car.

At first you had been furious that Derek had been given and had readily accepted all the credit for the trial, but if the credit for the breakthrough was going to retrieve the cocksure, confident, playful Derek Shepherd that you fell in love with, you don't care if he gets credit for every good thing you have done in your entire life. You just want your Derek back.

As you're pulling the back hatch down, the corner of a blue tarp catches your eye, and you tug that free of the confines of the car too. You struggle under the sheer size of your various objects, but you stagger to the edge of the deck, where you drop your blanket and tarp before setting down the cheesecake, the bag from the grocery store and the medical journal.

You pull a pen from your pocket and scratch a note to him on the top of the cheesecake box.

_Derek,_

_This is for you, obviously. I'm so sorry you're going through of all of this. That wasn't to be construed as pity but as empathy. I love you, and you're pain is mine, too. I want to share everything with you (in case you didn't figure that out from the candle house) and that includes the hard stuff. In sickness and in health, right? I know we aren't married, but someday we will be and I think that we can start supporting each other now. I hope I'm not freaking you out, but I probably am because I tend to destroy the good things in my life. And you, Derek Shepherd, are definitely and always the best part of my life. Even today. _

_I know you're angry, sad, confused and drunk. Not a good combination. I know; I've been there. For me it led to a string of sleeping with inappropriate men (before I ever knew you), so you yelling at me and swinging for the fences or whatever with the engagement ring is pretty tame comparatively. I want you to trust me; I want to know everything about you: the good, the bad and the ugly. And I want you to know everything about me. I know how hard it is to open up, so I don't expect it right away. _

_So for now, know that I know it wasn't your fault. Mistakes happen. If you researched your patients, you would realize that you have lost less than 1% of your non-terminal patients. And until the clinical trial you saved more terminal patients than you lost. In the clinical trial, we lost a lot of patients, I get that. I felt that loss too, but you also figured out how to cure a previous incurable brain tumor. You are a brilliant surgeon._

_But if you want to quit, then I will support you and stay by your side in whatever you decide to do. Teach? Go back to school? Change specialties? Move back to New York? Anything you want, Derek, because in case you didn't pick it up from the candle house and the officially living together thing, I'm whole and healed and in this forever._

_So here I am. Waiting for you. I know it sucks to be pushed, so when you're ready, whenever that is, I'm here._

_I love you._

_Mer_

You line the cheesecake, the aspirin and the ice cream up directly in front of his door, so he can't step out of the trailer without stepping on your small tokens. After, you pad quietly off the porch and survey the land. It takes you a moment to decide where to set up camp, but eventually you unfold the tarp and settle it atop the cold, frozen ground about thirty yards from his deck, clearly in the sightline of someone standing in the doorway. Lying down, with the medical journal tucked safely between your body and the tarp, you cocoon yourself in the wool blanket. The thought of the blanket—Derek's insistence that it stays in your piece of shit jeep (his words, not yours)—forms an inadvertent, small smile, like a puppeteer accidentally tugging the strings attached to the corners of your lips for no more than a blink of an eye.

You arrange your hands behind your head and stare contemplatively at the stars winking down at you. The Seattle night is clear, a rare occurrence for the time of year, but an anomaly for which you are grateful as it makes this little camping necessity considerably more tolerable.

The silence is complete but for the steady whoosh of your breathing, and the darkness is everywhere but for the flashes of the TV every so often from the trailer. Forlornly, you look at the warm, yellow of the light Derek neglected to flick off, letting it illuminate the porch and the immediate surrounding area. You have camped yourself far beyond that radius, knowing Derek would be furious to have you on that porch so close to him.

The truth is simple; you have traveled miles in your 100 step healing process and have long since trodden on the stone of baring your deepest, scariest, dark-and-twistiest secrets to him, but he has not made that much progress. His demons, you know, are very different from yours. But the Derek Shepherd that batted your engagement ring into the woods and hid in his trailer was not the one that he wanted anyone to see, particularly not you, the person who matters most to him. You know that about him, certainly. How could you not understand that with all your dark-and-twisty background?

You know how he despises the vulnerability he sees in himself, especially in moments like these. Despite his penchant for prodding, poking and pestering you until you reveal each of your heinous secrets, leaving you naked for his judgment, you know that he is terrified that if he strips down the walls he has built since his father was shot, you will find him inadequate and move onto to someone better, someone stable.

In your own head you find that notion ridiculous. You, looking for someone stable? Please. Stable is to you as Jennifer Aniston is to Brad Pitt.

Derek is so good at listening, understanding and never, ever judging. You can do that too; you do it on a nearly daily basis for Cristina—assuming the two of you are on speaking terms that day. You just want him to know that you can do it for him. That he has passed Cristina as your best friend, your person.

You suddenly become aware that the land is no longer being illuminated by periodic Technicolor flashes. The wilderness seems less disturbed suddenly; it seems peaceful for a moment before you realize that your soft breathing is now complemented by heartbreaking, gut-wrenching wails emanating from the trailer. Cries that bring tears immediately to your tired eyes. Cries that cause you physical pain, your stomach contracting like you are the one whose professional world has crashed around you, a mere two years after an ugly and shame-filled end to your personal life as you knew it. But it's not you shouldering the weight of your future, it's Derek, and knowing him, he feels like he's carrying the weight of your future and all your excessive baggage too. Knowing that the one person who has ever truly loved you is suffering only worsens the pain because you know that you'd do anything to take all the despair from him. At this point you'd even settle just for holding him, cuddling in his small trailer bed, stroking his thick curls and recently ignored stubble. But instead you're lying on a tarp in his yard, just to prove (as if the stupid, tacky, girly, embarrassing candle house wasn't proof enough) that you are really and truly in this for the long haul.

You lie there for a long time before it dawns on you that you are cold. Until a recent moment, the wool blanket was a sufficient barrier between your body and the biting March air, but now shivers scurry up and down your body. You wrap the blanket around yourself in a tighter cocoon and rub your arms, taming the wild outbreak of goose bumps over your skin. You aren't going to give up, but you can't help hoping that Derek's grief will overtake his anger, and he will invite you into his warm trailer.

The sobs continue to carry across the small field to your ears, and they tear through your aural system like a knife. You're hands are itching to fly over your ears, so you can hide from the emotional hardship carried by his agonizing cries. But you don't because you don't run anymore, and even though covering your ears wouldn't be physically running, in your book it still counts as hiding from something that you shouldn't be afraid of. There's nothing wrong with emotion; Dr. Wyatt helped you see that, but Derek so emotionally raw still scares you. You've never seen him let himself release all his feelings like this. You wonder vaguely if he has allowed himself to do this since his dad died all those years ago.

The cold has become a part of you; it no longer seems uncomfortable, rather something intrinsic in your life, like the fact that you are surgeon, or the fact that you are completely and irrevocably in love with Derek Shepherd. Because the cold has become interwoven with your very being and no longer has any sort of significant effect on your comfort level, you begin to feel sleepy. You doze on and off for several minutes, maybe an hour, images of Derek flashing through your mind during the times you drift off.

You wake up several hours later, but you can't tell if it's the light or the movement that jostles you from your sleep. You couldn't have been sleeping very deeply because when you're out, you know that you're a heavy sleeper. For a moment you wonder if you were snoring, but then you get distracted by the source of your movement. You're definitely not walking. You inhale deeply the scent of Derek's cologne mixed with the distinct aroma of the beer he was drinking earlier.

He must not be drunk anymore. You know from experience that although coordinated, he's not a very physically strong or helpful drunk. You figure time must have sobered him. Even with your eyes buried in Derek's sweater, you can tell that the gray light of dawn has overtaken the land.

You are about to relax into Derek's embrace when you remember that he's the one whose world no longer makes sense; he's the broken one. You flail wildly, trying to get down, but he grasps you tighter and lets his fingers dance over your side in a wonderfully soothing motion. Your physical exhaustion beats your concern for Derek quickly, and you can't help relaxing into his strong arms when they're so warm and inviting and cozy.

He steps into the trailer after only a brief struggle with the door and sets you on your side of the bed. You keep your eyes closed as he gently unbuttons your jeans, nothing sexual in the moment, only the quiet intimacy that has become the hallmark of your relationship. He removes your coat, your scarf and your sweater, leaving you before him in only your bra and panties. Your eyes are still closed, but you feel the vague change in temperature hitting your skin. You were outside for so long that your skin can barely differentiate between the cold inside your clothes and the chill of being nearly naked on a winter morning in the trailer.

Next he buttons one of his warm, soft flannel shirts on. You easily recognized the worn, comforting feel of his flannel without opening your eyes. As he slides a sweatshirt over your head—you know it's his bulky, heavy Bowdoin College one, you realize how well he knows you and how well you know him. He knows without asking that you prefer his clothes to your own, and if you could, you would wear them all the time. You are proven correct when you feel him sliding his fleece pants up your legs. Even after he gently lifts your hips off the bed to fit the waistband of the pants properly around your body, the legs of the pants extend far beyond your feet. Finally he replaces your socks with a pair of his own and then he leaves the room.

When you wake again, the clock on his bedside table reads 2:14, and by the light streaming into the trailer, even through the small windows, you can tell its 2:14 in the afternoon. As you sit up to roll out of bed and find Derek, a small piece of dirty metal and a piece of paper captivate your attention. You pick up the paper first.

_Mer,_

_I don't know what to say. I am so embarrassed. Every time you let down your walls and trust me, I go and fuck it up. Like last night, playing baseball with your engagement ring. That thing has been burning a hole in my pocket for weeks now. Ever since the day that we found out Archer Montgomery was coming to Seattle Grace for that procedure. Ever since that last day I saved a patient. _

_I'm so sorry everything has gone to hell since then. But the silver lining is that you have been the one constant, positive in my life from the moment you stepped into it. I know it sounds cheesy and dorky, but you have really lit the way for me in the toughest times, and you proved it again last night. Camping out on my land with just a tarp, a blanket and a medical journal in March qualifies as going way above and beyond the call of duty. So thank you. You are amazing._

_I salvaged the ring not because I plan to use it. It's tarnished by the way that I acted last night, and my new, beautiful, mysterious, but bright and shiny, whole and healed Meredith deserves an untainted ring. I'm not going to propose to you now because after all the shit your life _(you giggle at this line; he's always had an aversion to the word "crap" and has mostly refrained from using it, even with your fondness for it)_ you deserve a fairy tale proposal. I know you don't believe in fairy tales, and I probably didn't do much to egg on your belief in happily ever after last night, but you deserve an untainted proposal at the very least._

_I salvaged the ring only to prove to you that I still intend to marry you. And that nothing will make me happier than the day I become your husband. Mr. Meredith Grey. Because you're the strong one in this relationship; you're the whole and healed one. I still have a long way to go. But I'll always have you and I can't thank you enough for what you did for me last night._

_I love you._

_Derek_

You can't control the tears that spring to your eyes, but only a few cascade down your face. You want to run into Derek's arms and just hold him to take away the pain that hulks his shoulders in that unconfident way you saw the night before. But first you must gather your runaway emotions because you can't have him feeling anymore guilty than he already does about everything unrelated to your relationship that has happened in the last few days. You can't have him thinking he ruined your relationship too. Because he didn't. You two are communicating now. A few angry, drunk words can't change that.

When you're sure your tears are gone, you swing your legs to the floor and pad the tiny distance to the kitchen of his trailer. Your back is cramped in a way you can't remember it ever contorting, and as a result, you walk slightly hunched over to your boyfriend. He is sitting at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee and staring blankly at the medical journal you brought.

He looks up when you enter, but he doesn't smile or say anything. You bypass the coffee pot and the cereal and go straight into his arms, taking him by surprise. You're standing and he's still sitting on the stool, so his head falls on your chest and your hands find his curly hair.

Almost immediately you can feel his tears soaking through both the sweatshirt and the flannel button up that you vaguely remember him putting on you when he carried you in from the cold earlier that morning. Your skin has returned to normal and you can differentiate between gusts of chilly air in the trailer and the warmth inside Derek's cozy clothes.

Eventually, he lifts his head from your chest and looks up at your face. You are frightened and inspired by the vulnerability in his watery, red rimmed eyes. But you're mostly inspired. You've never seen this look before, but if you know Derek, it's safe to bet it's his "I'm ready to bare each of my deepest, darkest secrets to you" look.

"Come on," you say, motioning to the bedroom with your left hand. Your right stays buried firmly in the thicket of his hair. They are the first words either of you have spoken aloud in the presence of the other since he screamed at you to leave his land and him alone. He nods and stands, letting you lead him back to the bedroom.

You curse to yourself as you realize that you can't stand up straight because of your sore back, and you know Derek will notice unless he's really far gone. But you're pretty sure that the only thing that would make him that oblivious to you would be inebriation. And you're positive that he's sober. He's showered. There's no alcohol scent left, like there was when he carried you in. And he's not angry. He's an angry drunk. Probably because he only drinks excessively when he's already angry about something.

Your inner rambling is interrupted by a voice that you know is Derek's only because he's the only other person within a three or four mile radius. It is scratchy, quiet, broken, unfamiliar. "Why are you walking like that?"

You immediately try to straighten your spine and hope he's too distracted by his problems to prod, but as soon as you attempt to lift your head and pull back your shoulders, your entire lower back screams out at once, and you know the best thing to do is to lie down and allow it to loosen a bit before stretching. "Slept funny," you mutter, hoping he'll accept it.

But as you fall into bed, you hear him mutter back, "you slept on the frozen ground."

He sounds resentful, but you know he isn't—just confused. The letter proved that. You moan as you press the base of your spine into the mattress, and you know that Derek recognizes it for what it is: a moan of pain, not appreciation. He's made you moan in appreciation too many times not to recognize that sound instantly.

He immediately moves to you, taking your torso gently in his hands and nudging you until you roll onto your stomach. He straddles your thighs, suspending most of his weight on his knees and begins to run his hands over your aching back. It feels heavenly, but you only allow it to distract you for a moment before you focus your mind on Derek's dilemma, not on the wonderful physical feelings he is eliciting.

You want him to initiate the conversation. You know pestering will only make him more reticent, so you wait. Fortunately you don't have to wait long.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, repeating the sentiment in his letter in his ugly, broken voice.

"You were angry." You don't excuse his actions, but you demonstrate that you understand.

His hands run up your sides from the curve of your hip to your armpits and back down. "I was. But not at you."

"We take out our anger on the people we love because we know that they'll stick with us. It's a sign of faith."

Derek snorts and his hands tighten momentarily on your hips. "A twisted, fucked up sign of faith."

You giggle. "Maybe. That's exactly what I said to Dr. Wyatt when she said that to me."

His talented fingers begin to dig into the cramped muscles in your lower back. "Why can't I show that I have faith in you like a normal person would?"

"You were angry."

"Because I am a man with a god-complex who has no right to be so impressed with himself. I'm a fucking murderer, Meredith. I kill people and I get a million dollars a year to do it."

You roll over under his suspended weight, so you can see his face. It's twisted in a mask of anger, hurt and incomprehensible sadness. "Oh, Der," you emit in a wistful sigh. "You are not a murderer."

"I couldn't save Jen, and she's only one of the people I killed. You saw the stacks. I'm a fucking murderer."

"You aren't, Derek, don't you see? You take on the impossible. You lead successful clinical trials. You pioneer ways to cure previously untreatable brain tumors. You are a savior."

"I couldn't save Jen," he mutters again.

"You saved me," you counter, wondering if that is really the root of the issue.

He shrugged. "I dove into the water and pulled you out. You were down for hours, and the whole fucking hospital saw me a hell of a lot worse than this."

You inhale an abrupt gasp, and Denny's words come to the forefront of your mind. _If you don't go back, you'll change him forever…He still believes in true love and fairy tales. Do you know how rare that is?_ Silently, you thank Denny for making sure you made it back to your Derek.

"They understood," you venture, trying to find somewhere in this shell of a man the Derek that you once knew. "They understood," you repeat.

Something sparks in his blue eyes, and you know you have found your Derek. Although his face is crumpling into sobs and he has dropped his full weight onto your thighs, this is your Derek finally coming out. "You're here," he bawled, tipping forward and to the right so he doesn't land directly on top of you. He pulls your throbbing back tight against his firm chest and holds an arm around your waist like a trap. His nose finds your hair, and you find yourself hoping that the lavender that you conditioned your hair with more than 24 hours ago still has some strain of scent in. You can feel him inhaling and exhaling shakily against the back of your head, trying to calm his breathing.

When he finally does, he speaks. "I'm so tired, Mer. I just want to sleep."

"Sleep," you urge, knowing that there's something more, but wanting him to continue initiating the sharing.

"I can't," he mumbles, pulling even closer to you and resting his stubbly cheek atop your (hopefully) smoother one. "Every time I close my eyes I see Jen. And when I fall asleep I see you, blue and cold and dead."

You choke back a sob at what you nearly did to Derek. You don't want him to feel guilty because your giving up in Elliot Bay wasn't his fault. You came back for him. One day you'll make him see it, but that day is not today.

"I'm here, Der, I'm here." You pull out of his arms and move so you're sitting up against the headboard. You let him adjust so his head is pillowed in your lap, his arms wrapped around your thighs and his face cushioned against your stomach.

"I love you, Mer. I love you so much. I'm sorry about the ring. I'll get you a new one."

You let your fingers dance through his hair in a soothing motion. "I know. I know. I love you, too. And don't worry about the ring. Worry about figuring out what is right for you and then we can talk about the ring."

"I'm so sad," he mumbles. "I'm a good guy; I don't like operating unless I have to. I was never a blood thirsty, cutting for the sake of cutting, loving holidays because there are more accidents kind of guy. I hate when people die in general, but especially when it happens in my OR. But I'm a surgeon."

He pauses and you let him collect his thoughts, still massaging his scalp slowly and comfortingly.

"I'm a sad, sad, depressed surgeon facing malpractice. But I'm a surgeon."

"Okay," you agree. You feel his breaths even against your stomach until you know he's asleep. And even though you had to sleep outside in the cold in March to prove to him that you are in this (even after your stupid candle house), even though most everything you resolved you discussed through long, ramble-y notes and even though your back is screaming a constant song of pain at the position you are sitting in, you are exactly where you want to be.

He knows you're here.

He knows you're ready.

At some point, and you're in no hurry because you want him to be whole and healed and happy like you are, he's going to propose.

You'll have your happily ever after, and tangible proof, the kind a girl like Meredith Grey needs, is sitting next to you on his bedside table, in the form of a diamond ring. Although it has lost some of its glimmer, has a scratch where Derek's baseball bat hit it, and dirt is caked in the setting, you reach out with one hand and pick it up, seeing for the first time, the wonderful reality of your happily ever after.

Review!!


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